4.2. Progress Window Freezes at "Initializing ... 100%"

Applies to: @RISK 6.x/7.x

When I click Start Simulation, after some messages on the Excel status line the @RISK Progress Window appears. At the top of the Progress Window I see "Initializing..." and it increases to 100%. But there it stops. Either my simulation never proceeds, or after a long time it starts to do iterations, but very slowly.

Unless you tell it otherwise, @RISK will run larger simulations in multiple cores or CPUs. @RISK uses Windows protocols to start each "worker" copy of Excel and send it work. Sometimes, the worker Excels don't respond to commands from the master, or the workers may not even start up. In this case, the master gets stuck, waiting for responses from the workers.

The Progress Window can tell you what's going on. If your Progress Window isn't already expanded, click the chevron at the bottom right of the window. That will display the status of each CPU being used in the simulation. (If there's no Progress Window, see Progress Window Not Displayed during Simulation.)

If one or more processes show a status of "Excel is not responding", the master is waiting for those processes to report back. Eventually the master will time out and start doing the workers' work itself, but that can take a long time.

But it might not be the fault of the worker Excels. Instead, an essential add-in, RiskSimMultiCpu7.xla, might be in Excel's list of disabled items. (In @RISK 6.x, it would be RiskSimMultiCpu6.xla.)

Take a look at Excel's list of disabled items: Click File » Options » Add-Ins, and scroll the right-hand pane to the bottom. If you see one of the RiskSimMultiCpu add-ins listed there, change "Excel Add-ins" to "Disabled items" in the box at the bottom of the pane, click Go, and re-enable that add-in. Click OK and close Excel.